Since Zeos pointed out that well recorded music isn’t a genre and I agree with him that it should be, I think we should have a thread about it. Something tells me this is going to be really subjective so we’ll see how it goes.
Post your favorite well recorded albums or tracks. Any genre welcome. Bonus points for label / catalog numbers.
Tool - Lateralus
Jazz
Mediterraneamente by Gianluigi Trovesi:
Joey.Monk.Live! by Joey Alexander:
Classical
Vivaldi: Chamber Music by Thomas Indermühle, et al.:
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=103807
Lebrun Oboe Concertos by Bart Schneemann, volumes 1 & 2:
https://www.channelclassics.com/catalogue/16198-Lebrun-Oboe-Concertos/
https://www.channelclassics.com/catalogue/21404-Oboe-Concertos/
All can be heard on Spotify.
basically, anything by Analogue Productions[not affiliated]
they mostly press vinyl records but do a lot of sacd, even some cd and digital download, all easily convertable to .flac
Random Access Memories by Daft Punk
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles
The Doors by The Doors
Thriller by Michael Jackson
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
24K Magic by Bruno Mars
Moon Safari by Air
… more to come…
Exodus by Bob Marley & The Wailers
Saudade by Thievery Corporation
Rats by Balthazar
Obviously youtube has compression so if you listen to the album downloaded or off something like Tidal it’s better but either way this album sounds amazing, here is the playlist of songs.
Album is Ruinism by Lapalux
Two of my favs…Kate produced The Sensual World and brought an amazing finally sound to the album.
The second The Trinity Sessions by the Cowboy Junkies was recorded at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto you can even hear the old heating behind Margo’s a cappella on the first track “Mining for Gold”
Not necessarily fitting the topic, but also maybe sort of. If you’re into older progressive rock, Yes, Jethro Tull and King Crimson all have older releases remastered by Steven Wilson. And they are glorious. Which leads to something that does fit the topic squarely. Most of the solo albums by Steven are fantastic sounding, as well as the albums he produced while in Porcupine Tree.
Oh, so you mean my whole collection? Can’t post all of that here, most of it it’s not even on youtube. However here are some samples:
Some trace samples of other stuff:
I just looked at the waveforms of all the music (.wav files) I bought on Beatport, and found these. So if you want well-recorded electronic music, enjoy!
This is a great album so far. Thanks for the recommendation.
Well, I don’t know if eeeverything, but that’s just me and movie-music in general: I can’t enjoy it if I’m not also watching the movie, since the pacing and emotions are so tied up in whatever scene each musical passage goes with. Even if I’ve seen the movie it still doesn’t work for me usually, unless there’s some song that’s made to stand just as well on its own, like if it was composed separately (e.g. Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” vs. its use in “Arrival”). BUT the one exception to this is indeed Austin Wintory and his OST for “Journey”. <3 <3 Especially if you’ve played the game or seen a full playthrough without commentary (it works perfectly fine as a movie IMO), that music is just… beyond words. There’s a reason it was the first full videogame OST to be nominated for a Grammy, and it’s probably also not separate from why it so happened that 3 of the game’s 25 in-house testers cried when they finished it.
I was gonna ask: does electronic even qualify as recorded? 
Maybe @ZeosPantera can shed some light on this.
Well you have to RECORD it to a master… and you choose the levels and dynamic range… So yes.
I was the same at first, my brain always enjoyed far more OST from stuff I have watched before, but that was just my inability to take music for what it is and kept needing to mingle it with other enjoyable memories to make it really good.
That was ok however, since it was my gateway towards true music listening. After some ~20.000 tracks of music listened, my brain is now able to recognize instantly which music is really beautiful and needs to be in my collection. It often happens now for the process to be in reverse, finding really beautiful music and wanting to watch the movie or play the game as a consequence.
Otherwise I would never be able to enjoy classical properly, since most of it is not featured in movies and stuff like that. Actually, classical music is a good example of my next point: really good music is a story on it’s own. The long classical pieces are structured like this, they don’t count on small catchy passages to keep the listener entertained, but the whole “journey” is needed to properly appreciate the climax.
But Austin Wintory really has well-recorded music across the board. As far as I heard in his albums, his tool of trade is full orchestral music, not sampled stuff. That fits right in with “well-recorded”.
Oh, OK. So well-mastered is also a big part of the concept. I thought you only meant well recorded from the air.
not sure at all if these qualify especially cause Im posting the youtube links
this one im not at all sure if this is what is considered well recorded . but given it’s hip hop it’s rather clean and the way this song plays with 2 voices at the same time playing with both left and right channels is very interesting and is part of my headphone test playlist for imaging also just a great jazz rap song
Wow, thanks.
Post must be at least 20 characters. Yeah, yeah.
I recommend ‘Jazz at the Pawnshop’ by Arne Domnerus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgHvUAT_HOE&list=PLdZhik4dyFHpzUVQrIixKZbgKG8eOKLgC
